No Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate seeking election in November has revealed potential conflicts of interest to Citizen Congress Watch, it said yesterday, after the party in January ceased cooperating with the legislative watchdog, citing alleged bias.
Every candidate from the Taiwan People’s Party and New Power Party (NPP) complied with Citizen Congress Watch’s request to disclose potential conflicts of interest, it told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Sixty-one Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers are contesting the local elections on Nov. 26, 47 of whom — or 77 percent — voluntarily shared the information, it said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Although conflict of interest disclosures are not mandatory for lawmakers, Citizen Congress Watch chairman Tseng Chien-yuan (曾建元) said the measures are an important test of a candidate’s integrity and character.
“As candidates are not legally required to disclose conflicts of interest, the group can only appeal to their sense of decency when asking them to cooperate,” Tseng said.
Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬), the DPP’s candidate for Taoyuan mayor, Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), the KMT’s candidate for Taipei mayor, and Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華), the KMT’s candidate for Nantou County commissioner, are among the legislators who refused to disclose potential conflicts of interest, Tseng said.
The lack of transparency is particularly notable in the KMT, with the entire party stonewalling the group’s request, while only individual members of the DPP refused to cooperate, he said.
Chiang was formerly named by Citizen Congress Watch as a lawmaker of outstanding ethical conduct in multiple rankings, but he appears to have bowed to the party’s pressure, Tseng said.
The criteria and process the group uses to assess conflicts of interest are fair and transparent, Citizen Congress Watch executive director Leo Chang (張宏林) said.
The group asks lawmakers to disclose whether they employ any close relatives as staff, name commercial entities or non-profit organizations they hold positions in, and other factual questions not related to partisanship, Chang said.
“We strongly condemn the KMT’s refusal to disclose potential conflicts of interest and its slanderous assertion that Citizen Congress Watch has an ideological orientation,” he said.
The Legislative Yuan has passed a transparency resolution agreeing with the principle that certain information about its members should be disclosed via official channels without being asked for by civic groups, he said.
Lawmakers who have concerns about Citizen Congress Watch’s objectivity could have simply disclosed the information on their own, but they chose not to, he said, calling Chiang’s refusal “disappointing.”
“Have you become the KMT’s exclusive property? Why have you stopped doing a thing that you believed was right on the party’s say-so [and] against the [transparency] resolution that was passed by a democratic vote?” Chang asked. “Have you become the party’s obedient dog?”
After the resolution was passed, a Web domain and declaration forms were prepared for lawmakers to declare conflicts of interest, but it has never put to use, he said.
The public should condemn the political party that is preventing the resolution from being carried out and think twice about voting for a candidate who can be stopped from following their conscience by their party, he said.
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